Maybe he's smart not to come up with a catch phrase. The president who most famously tried to do that was Herbert Hoover, or so the story goes. Barely a month after the crash of 1929, apparently not wanting to scare people with the term "panic," he tried a different one in his State of the Union address:

"This hesitation [in business investment] unchecked could in itself intensify into a depression with widespread unemployment and suffering."

It proved more prophetic than politically wise. By the end of his administration, people had started capitalizing the "D." By the late 1930s, it was joined with "Great" and tagged Hoover with economic failure.

A recovery, anybody?Obama, in fact, has moved the other direction. Using focus-group research, aides have urged members of Congress to use "recovery" instead of "recession," Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.

So what will we call this period? Perhaps, in this Internet age, we should let the people decide. Great Recession wins in Google searches. The term even has its own website, which reads: "because it’s not a depression. yet."